Dathadorne noted that, if you start personhood with the fusion of egg and sperm, the loss rate totals about 70%.

I believe that this starts with a 50% loss rate (or thereabouts) between conception and implantation. There are also very few ways of establishing that an individual woman has conceived before implantation, which is why, medically speaking, "pregnancy" does not start until implantation has occurred - somewhere between 5 and 10 days (if I remember correctly).

There seem to be a lot of people who maintain that conception is "the only logical place to start personhood". I think that, if you must go that far back, then implantation in the womb is the only logical place to start. Firstly it is the point at which pregnancy can be established by clinical tests. Secondly it avoids the legal nonsense of declaring that a woman must be held responsible for a life which only has 50% chance of making it through 10 days. Thirdly it avoids the medical horror of forcing a woman to go through with an ectopic pregnancy, which always ends in the death of the foetus and, left alone, often kills the mother too.

Even after implantation, there is still a high risk of miscarriage and stillbirth - the womb, far from being a "sanctuary" is still a very risky place to be. Even when you remove the effects of abortion, there are something like 800,000 pregnancy losses a year in the US, compared to 4m live births.

Assume that some proportion of the aborted foetuses would have miscarried naturally, and you can round the figures up to give you 1m lost pregnancies for every 4m live births. But this figure deals with "clinically established pregnancies" - i.e. those which have got as far as implantation. Total number of established pregnancies, then, a nice round 5m.

Take things back, as so many in the US wish to do, to conception and you have to add in the 50% loss rate between conception and implantation. This adds up to a total 10m conceptions, leading to 4m live births. The US would still be allowing 6m of its "innocent" "persons" to die, mostly unregistered, per year.

There is a suggestion that all miscarriages should be registered, and a few people even want to have all "unsupervised" miscarriages investigated. Perhaps this is the Religious Right's answer to the need for extra jobs in the economy. It also suggests almost unparalleled opportunities for mischief making - the suspicious mother-in-law who thinks her daughter-in-law is "covering up" miscarriages is an obvious example.

The real evil behind all this lies in the already-established practice of charging women who have had "unsupervised" or "unexpected" miscarriages with "depraved-heart" murder. That is to say that they have done things which they should have known might cause a miscarriage - failed suicide attempts are already attracting the attention of the law. Drug use is another risk factor. But recently there have even been women who were reported by medical staff because they admitted to having "thought about" abortion. The next step should, one feels, be smoking - it is well established that a woman who smokes increases her chances of miscarrying - and drinking.

That is bad, but there is a killer factor here. Many miscarriages happen before the women knows she is pregnant, but the damage done by drink or drugs or even 2nd-hand smoke may occur before she knows she is pregnant. That will not, one supposes, stop the behaviour being culpable. It would be easy to establish a precedent that says that a woman who *might* be pregnant must conduct herself as though she *were* pregnant, or risk being tried for 2nd degree murder by culpable negligence if she has, and then loses, a conception. And the legislation being framed will probably effectively outlaw some of the safer forms of contraception.

It is this extension of the duties of full motherhood to those who do not, even to those who cannot, know that they are pregnant which carries the greatest load of "unintended consequences". The rules governing the health and employment rights of pregnant women would have to be re-written, as would those of health insurance, to cover the "potentially pregnant". After all, there might be an extra US citizen (or 2) present, whose rights have to be safeguarded.

I can see that lawyers too, might be keen to see this job creation scheme passed. Unless they are are women, of course.

Despite all the furor over this initiative, Amendment 26 is not about abortion; rather, it is about legislating women's reproductive health care. This amendment treats women as second-class citizens in need of legislative oversight and regulation. The actual issue is one of unintended consequences and how the state legislature will choose to interpret the wording of the amendment. Despite the claims and counterclaims being hurled back and forth, the fact is that no one on either side of this important issue can say with any degree of certainty how this amendment, if passed, will be interpreted by the courts. If that is not reason enough to vote against this initiative then one should only consider the disproportionate impact this amendment will have on minority and poor women in this state.

If the law here passes what will come of it? They clearly stated that federal law is over state when a conflict between the two arises. So if it is illegal to the state but legal at the federal level then it is still legal and women can still have abortions. Even though I am pro-life I have to say that this law may not be the best thing to do. What needs to happen is the federal government should leave abortion up to the states rather than trying to control every decision in all fifty states. It is the same with alcohol so why not leave it to the states to make their own decision, since some are anyways.

A human being comes into existence as soon as that egg is fertilized. No they have not taken their first breath, but it is already in the process of becoming a person, and through the natural way of life, eventually becomes one. To terminate an existing pregnancy is to terminate a future life, whether it is breathing already or not. Women are in control of their bodies, and can do what they want, but when unprotected sex or some other mishap occurs, that responsibility falls on them. It's worse than unfortunate when you get pregnant when you are not ready to have a child, but once you are pregnant, that egg is in the early stages of becoming a human. If it weren't a human, then why does it cause so much pain and mixed emotion to those that have to go through an abortion? Deep down they know that child inside of them, no matter how developed should and would eventually become a human life. I myself would be devastated if I were to get pregnant now, but the way that I look at it, sex creates babies. If I am old enough and mature enough to have sex, then I should be aware that this is how babies are created and there is that possibility that I could become pregnant. I wouldn't want to, but if it happened, I would hate myself more for never giving a life I created a chance. Terminating that innocent child's opportunity for life is wrong, no matter if you are religious or not. I think that the remarks about whether a woman could be charged with child abuse if she smokes is stretching it a little too far, but I am for initiative 26. It seems like what most of the people want, and helps prevent people from terminating an innocent life.

There is a fine line between a contraceptive and ending a life that has already begun. People are so used to using contraceptives that abortion just seems like another good option to keep from having a kid. Well there is a big difference between keeping a child from being born and ending his or her life once it has begun.

If a zygote is in fact a person then all of those consequences are entirely irrelevant. I appreciate the difficulty of trying to pin down the precise beginning of human life, personhood, or whatever you want to call it. I think that reasonable people can disagree on whether to define that beginning based on genetics, physiology, metabolism, psychology, or some other criteria.

However, I reject the idea that this uncertainty should prevent us, as a society, from finding some consensus as to when that beginning occurs, or from ensuring that our laws are consistent with that consensus.

Abortions/ terminating pregnancies has always been a difficult issue in the USA. What it all comes down is a what stage in the pregnancy does the embryo become a “person”? And therefore, when does terminating a pregnancy mean terminating a life? For these questions, there are many different answers to different people. That is why it is important that Roe vs Wade is precedent to allow for first-trimester abortions so that people can make their own decisions.
I do not agree with Mississippi for trying to go against the Supreme Court, however whatever the ruling, the Supreme Court will trump it. Not only are they trying to stop abortions, but also cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, the “morning-after pill”, and IUDs. The government needs to be less involved in the people’s personal life and their choices. The banning of the “morning-after pill” is ridiculous as the sperm has not even met the egg at this point. Mississippi should be very wary of the outcomes of this voting.

In simple terms, excepting extreme situations such as when the mother’s life is in danger, I believe viability is the cut off point for abortion (when I said it was the mother’s choice I meant that up to that point she should be free to chose if she wants one or if she doesn’t without any legal interference.

As for Angela Carder, the Wikipedia article isn’t that detailed but having studied the lawsuit and appeals that followed her death I can tell you that she had been told that her cancer was terminal twice before only to fight it off and her own oncologist when he was consulted thought she could fight it again and was in favour of treatment which makes it slightly less clean cut.

When it comes down perhaps to a choice between a mother and a very viable baby, as you suggested maybe only two weeks premature, I would be nervous about setting any hard and fast rule, there could be too many exceptions. Personally I think that doctors should try to balance the wishes of the mother (or her medical proxy) with the likelihood of survival of her or the baby but with the emphasis, unless she has asked otherwise, on preserving her life.

My thoughts on abortion are simple. If the procedure takes place before or during the first trimester it is acceptable. The fetus does not begin to breath on its own until approximately the 36th week. If abortion were performed at this point I consider that immoral.

You can think that at fertilization the baby is alive and technically it is. But other things are alive and we do not care about their fate. My example being bugs. We do not care that we kill or squash them but humans are different in regards to hierarchy.

Personally I do not know why society cares so much. The article mentions that Mississippi is a religious state and granted that counts for majority but not all residents are to that extreme. Whatever happened to mind your own business or out of sight out of mind. I understand those are hard to utilize when a "life" is on the line but so is the life of the woman giving birth.

Whether a fetus is a person or not should be in the hands of the mother. It is a biblical issue, and for those that don't practice the Bible, technically the fetus is not a person. Getting an abortion should be the decision of the mother.... and she should be allowed to decide what to do under her certain circumstances. Pro-life advocates have no right to force others to believe what they believe, and vice versa. This amendment wouldn't be necessary if mothers were able to decide for themselves about THEIR choice to get an abortion.
If abortion counts as murder, would losing a child due to, say, bumping into something, count as involuntary manslaughter? The implications of this amendment would be endless, and I think it is better left in the hands of the mother... after all, it is her life and her child; and she will have to live with the consequences, whether good or bad.

It is interesting to see that this hot button topic is still around. I remember much more hype five years ago. Should Mississippi pass 26, it will do more as a symbol than anything else. I believe activists in other states seeing the success in Mississippi will start to rally. This could be the restart of a mellowed out movement.

Typical social policy distractions from the state gov't in Mississippi to focus away attention from the fact that Mississippi is just a terrible place to live. If you ever really want to see the 3rd world in the United States, you shouldn't head to an inner city slum but rural parts of Mississippi Delta where the demographic and financial measures of the population are on par with a developing nation including the lifespan of ~65 years for males and ~72 for females.

While this law has implications for abortion. That is not what the law is about. It simply is about establishing person-hood. Though its fabulous hearing all these opinions about what individuals believe the beginning of life is that does not really apply here, even dead people have rights and are human. By giving a fetus person-hood gives it some rights but it does not establish what rights. If you are pro-choice then you need to deal with the reality of what you are supporting.

This issue should have nothing to do with embryonic stem cell research. Why would this research be denied if this legislature carried out? This research could become very important to our lives in the future.